My mother cried when I told her I was changing my major from engineering to chemistry. Her fear was that I would never earn a living as a chemist.

When she heard a few years later that I planned to go for a PhD in chemistry, her only comment was,

So why don’t you at...

Chronic conditions, such as Type II diabetes and hypertension, account for seven in 10 deaths in the United States each year. And by some estimates, public health factors, such as the physical environment we live in, socioeconomic...

President Obama is taking aim at the so-called “gun-show loophole.”

Obama’s most recent executive order on gun control attempts to clarify a distinction in federal firearms regulations between gun sales by businesses...

During the most recent Republican debate, Donald Trump declared “people are pouring across the southern border.”

Trump is right that the United States has been a major immigrant destination since the 1960s, but if he is referring to Mexican flows today, he is wrong.

According to sociologists...

In A Forger’s Tale – convicted forger Shaun Greenhalgh’s new memoir – Greenhalgh reveals that he drew Leonardo da Vinci’s La Bella Principessa, which has been valued upwards of US$100 million.

Greenhalgh even admits that he modeled the subject after a...

Ever wondered why boys and girls choose particular toys, particular colors and particular stories? Why is it that girls want to dress in pink and to be princesses, or boys want to be Darth Vader, warriors and space adventurers?

Stories told to children can make a difference.

Scholars have found that stories...

If ever a city was built to be resilient to heavy rains, it is Los Angeles. And yet, El Niño is about to test just how resilient the city is in the short term to flooding, and even more importantly, how resilient it can be to water shortages over the long...

By 2020 157 million people in the US will be living with at least one chronic health condition. As the number of Americans managing diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol increases, the ranks of...

The San Bernardino massacre is unique in several respects, but it does bring into focus an important issue with broad relevance: how do dangerous people obtain guns, and what should the police and courts be doing to make those transactions more difficult?

The shooters – Syed Rizwan Farook and...

One of the most common New Year’s resolutions people make is to lose weight by dieting. The idea is that restricting the pleasures of tasty foods will lead to greater fitness and a finer physique. But if these rewards are so valuable, why is it so hard for us to stick to our...